Lusaka Province UPND chairperson Obvious Mwaliteta says the Patriotic Front should not blame the opposition political party for infighting which has rocked the ruling party.

On Monday, PF aspiring candidate for the Lusaka chairmanship Kennedy Kamba charged that the UPND had connived with investigative wings such as the ACC to scandalize influential ministers so that they could get fired and leave President Edgar Lungu vulnerable.

But in an interview, Mwaliteta said Kamba’s allegations were baseless because whatever was happening was a result of infighting within the PF.

“Why is he saying it indirectly? He should just say it direct that there is total confusion in their political party and now they are fighting amongst themselves. So Bwana Kamba should just say that it is within their party that President Lungu wants to wipe out the Luapula people and then he wants to accuse the opposition political party. If as UPND we had powers to influence the ACC, by now this corruption which has traumatized Zambians was going to finish because we would have told them and give them evidence because the Zambian people have been trying to give evidence to ACC to arrest people but they have not arrested them. Why should they arrest them now? And what has changed for UPND to tell them that these people are thieves?” Mwaliteta asked.

“It’s not only UPND who have cried foul over corruption in Zambia, it’s all Zambians in general. Recently, the First Lady went to America to go and receive the fire tenders, look at the fire tenders the way they look and look at the fire tenders for US $1 million the way they look, look at the water capacity of those fire tenders which were donated and look at the capacity of those fire tenders for US $1 million. A lot of things have gone wrong in Zambia. The guilty ones are always afraid. They should just check the cry of the Zambian people which has traumatized them to the point where every Zambian is crying in his bedroom [thinking about] what he is going to feed the children. How the children will go to school [and] yet other people are keeping billions of money in their trunks. God if watching everyone.”

Mwaliteta said God wanted to finish the PF by bringing confusion amongst themselve.

“So God wants to finish them now [that is why] he has brought confusion among themselves. So they don’t know who to point a finger at. Now they want to start pointing fingers at other people, no. If other people had influence, how many cases have been reported of corruption by other people, and ACC has not acted? ACC only acts when it’s government telling them what to do. So Kamba should just say the truth that ‘no, one of our senior people is the one who is reporting against us so that this Luapula versus PF should crack, or Luapula versus Eastern should crack because there is always war between Luapula Province and Eastern Province and it’s there for everyone to see. And as UPND, we have no hand in what is happening in PF but we are very glad that the ACC has started acting. And we only hope that they should not give small charges and leave bigger charges because when they say ‘concealing information of property of suspected crime or whatever’ what crime? They have to start to the route cause how that person came to acquire those properties? Where did the monies come from?” he asked.

Meanwhile, Mwaliteta urged the ACC to spearhead investigations on all corruption allegations without fear.

“We are hoping that the ACC should do more to dig beeper and come up with formidable charges against the corrupt ministers if there is any evidence than just to arrest someone and give him small charges and leave big charges under the ground. We are also worried the way they are doing it. We want them to do it more professional. We are expecting that since Edgar Lungu says that he wants to fight corruption, we want the ACC now to spearhead that corruption now that the president says ‘go ahead.’ They should not fear anything. And because President Lungu told us that his cabinet ministers were corrupt, what has changed? Has he forgotten, his party is a party of the corrupt among the PF. Imagine even the minister of Agriculture was accepting that there is corruption in the FISP programme. Please we are not dull, we are asking this government to feel pity for these Zambian people who can’t afford to do anything for themselves. So we will see how far this case will go but this is just the beginning of the crack between the Luapula and Eastern,” said Mwaliteta.